Tom Kilburn
British electrical engineer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Tom Kilburn?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Tom Kilburn CBE FRS (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist.[1][2] Over his 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.[3][4][5]
Tom Kilburn | |
---|---|
Born | (1921-08-11)11 August 1921 Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England |
Died | 17 January 2001(2001-01-17) (aged 79) Manchester, England |
Nationality | English |
Education | Wheelwright Grammar School for Boys |
Alma mater |
|
Known for | |
Spouse |
Irene Marsden (m. 1943) |
Children | 2[1] |
Awards |
|
Scientific career | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines (1948) |
Doctoral advisor | Frederic Calland Williams |
A graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Kilburn worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern under Frederic Calland Williams during the Second World War. After the war ended, he was recruited by Williams to work on the development of computers at the University of Manchester. He led the development of a succession of innovative Manchester computers that incorporated a host of ground-breaking innovations and developments, including the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercial computer, and the Atlas, one of the first time-sharing multiprocessing computers that incorporated job scheduling, spooling, interrupts, instruction pipelining and paging.[6]